A Feshbach resonance in collisions between triplet ground-state molecules

Abstract

Collisional resonances are important tools that have been used to modify interactions in ultracold gases, for realizing previously unknown Hamiltonians in quantum simulations¹, for creating molecules from atomic gases² and for controlling chemical reactions. So far, such resonances have been observed for atom-atom collisions, atom-molecule collisions^3-7 and collisions between Feshbach molecules, which are very weakly bound^8-10. Whether such resonances exist for ultracold ground-state molecules has been debated owing to the possibly high density of states and/or rapid decay of the resonant complex^11-15. Here we report a very pronounced and narrow (25 mG) Feshbach resonance in collisions between two triplet ground-state NaLi molecules. This molecular Feshbach resonance has two special characteristics. First, the collisional loss rate is enhanced by more than two orders of magnitude above the background loss rate, which is saturated at the p-wave universal value, owing to strong chemical reactivity. Second, the resonance is located at a magnetic field where two open channels become nearly degenerate. This implies that the intermediate complex predominantly decays to the second open channel. We describe the resonant loss feature using a model with coupled modes that is analogous to a Fabry-Pérot cavity. Our observations provide strong evidence for the existence of long-lived coherent intermediate complexes even in systems without reaction barriers and open up the possibility of coherent control of chemical reactions.